Page 58 of Shiver

“William, please.” Her mama stood and rushed to her husband. “You’re turning all red. It’s not good for you. You know what the doctor said.”

“What doctor?” Devra asked, as fear for his health grabbed hold of her heart. “What’s wrong?”

Fire burned deep in his eyes. “You tell him the truth, Devra Ann.” He gestured toward Riley. “You tell him what a sweet child you were, the light of your mama’s and my life.”

Her mama dropped her head into her hand.

“Do you think we wanted to believe our daughter was sick?”

Devra cringed at her papa’s words.

“But things started happening around here—the gas left on, the lug nuts loosened on my car. You claimed it wasn’t you, but I found the tire iron in your room.”

“It wasn’t me. Why would I want to hurt you?” Dread clutched her heart and sickened her. Had the killer been trying to hurt her family? She turned to Riley. He had that cold, wary cop’s expression on his face. She didn’t like it. He had to believe in her. She wouldn’t have the strength to continue without him. To fight this battle alone.

“The year you turned thirteen, puberty and the devil struck and stole that sweet child right out of our lives.”

“Please, William. Don’t bring all that back up again. I can’t bear it.”

“We have to, Lydia. Don’t you see? It’s happening again. She’s come back because more have died. Death follows her like stink on a skunk. I tried to cleanse her of it, but she’s come and brought the devil back home.”

Tears filled Devra’s eyes. She loved her papa with all her heart, even after all he’d done to “cleanse” her of the devil: the scrubbings with the hard boar brush, the nightly Bible readings until her eyes burned with fatigue. But she knew it had come from his heart. She had tried to understand until he sent her away.

“We brought you back after Tommy died,” her papa continued. “We were determined to fight for you, to fight for your freedom, but then the dreams came. They were brutal. You wrote them down in your diary and your mama found it. Horrific things no young sweet child would even imagine, let alone write. They say puberty does strange things to the mind but we never imagined…”

“We had to send you away. It broke our hearts, but what choice did we have?” Lydia pleaded for understanding.

“There was something very wrong with you. I guess there were signs earlier. There was a kitten once…but you were always such an angel, inside and out.”

Devra couldn’t move. Resentment blurred her vision. “I loved that kitten. I never would have—” she couldn’t even say the words, couldn’t even let her mind flash back to what had been done to her beloved pet. “You really, honestly, believed that I was capable of such violence? You are my parents. You raised me. You are supposed to be my advocate, to believe in me when no one else does, to protect me. Instead, you fed me to the wolves.”

Her head was spinning. Tears were closing her throat and threatening to overwhelm her. She wouldn’t get help here. She had been a fool to think she would. She rose from the table and turned toward the door.

“Paranoid delusions. Schizophrenic. Withdrawn.”

She stopped and turned back to her father. Fear commingled with dread and choked any words she might have spoken to stop him.

“Those are just a few of the words the doctors at the sanitarium used to describe your condition. They said they could cure you. They said they could make you better. How could they have let you out, if they’d been so wrong? If more people have had to die? God help me.”

Devra stood rooted to the floor, her eyes focused on Riley’s. He stared at her, with what? Hurt? Confusion? Disgust? She should have told him. She knew the truth would come out; she prayed it wouldn’t have.

“I wasn’t sick.” Her voice shook as she said the words. Years of pent-up anger and frustration overwhelmed her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only feel. “You locked me up in that horrible place and never came to see me. Not once. If you had, I could have told you the truth. I could have told you that I wasn’t sick. I didn’t need all the drugs those so-called doctors were drowning me with.”

She took a step toward them. “Not that it would have mattered. Not that you would have believed me. I didn’t kill Tommy. I didn’t deserve to be locked up.” Her voice broke with emotion. “I didn’t deserve to lose my family. You were all I had in the world. And you turned your backs on me.”

Devra couldn’t swallow. Her mama looked at her with years of pain and regret distorting her face. Bitterness filled her father’s. Shocked disbelief filled Riley’s.

“I was a child, a little girl.” Not able to bear anymore, she turned from them and left the room, running out the door and into the woods, hoping to get as far away from them as she could. Riley’s shocked expression flashed painfully through her mind. He was as lost to her as her parents were. Now he knew the truth. He knew there was something wrong with her. He knew she wasn’t worthy of his love.

How could she be? She was damaged.

* * *

Riley was still tryingto process what Devra’s father had said when Devra ran out the door. He jumped up. “Devra wait.”

“Don’t worry,” her father said. “She knows that forest like the back of her hand. She just needs a few minutes.”

Riley stared at him. “Don’t you understand? She wasn’t exaggerating. There is a killer after her.”

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